Wednesday, 30 May 2012

The Houla Massacre And Faith-Based Initiatives.

And so the world witnesses another brutal massacre of women and children by people who've come to see themselves as superior to others and so have assumed for themselves the power of life and death over others.

But is this really surprising in a part of the world still dominated by a religious superstition having it's origins in the brutal pre-civilised Bronze Age when massacres of the sort were routine and are still defended as right and proper by people like William Lane Craig and other politically motivated pseudo-religious apologists?

It's perhaps worth recalling how leading Christian apologist William Lane Craig defended the Canaanite Genocide described triumphantly in the Christian Bible:

But why take the lives of innocent children? ... if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

William Lane Craig, professional Christian apologist

Killing children is good for them. It makes them happy and we should actually pity the "traumatized" soldiers who have to break into houses and murder them! He actually said that!

No. I couldn't believe it either until I saw Lane Craig saying it for myself here:

"It's not a pleasant job, but somebody has to do it. It's all to the good in the end!"

I wonder how many guards at Treblinka, Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald and Sobibor said that.

William Lane Craig is highly regarded as a theologian in American right-wing circles and even has a band of loyal devotees in other English-speaking countries.

So, if you want to see what America would be like if Craig and those to whom he provides his repugnant apologetics ever gained the power they seek, look no further than the Syrian village of Taldou near Houla where at least 108 people, including women and children, were dragged from their homes and massacred in something remarkably similar, though on a smaller scale, to the Canaanite Massacre some 3500 years earlier and a little way to the south, by people who believed they had a duty to do it because their priests and authority figures told them they had.

I wonder if those who carried out the crime think they should be pitied for being traumatized in the process of doing their essential work and clearing the world of lesser beings and undesirables. There can be little doubt that William Lane Craig would regard our instinctive human revulsion over these 'faith-based initiatives' as an "emotional outburst" indicative of a character flaw and a lack of intellect, as he chillingly explained here in a reply to one of his devoted right-wing loon followers.

13 comments
:

"Killing children is good for them. It makes them happy and we should actually pity the "traumatized" soldiers who have to break into houses and murder them!"

"It's not a pleasant job, but somebody has to do it. It's all to the good in the end!"

You portray these two statements as though they are direct quotes from the video you include in your post. Having watched the video (which seems badly cut, and is open to accusations of being out of context), I discovered that neither statement is a direct quote.

I'm sorry your embarrassment at the behaviour of William Lane Craig and other followers of one or other version of your brutal, Bronze Age superstition, has made you feel you need to discredit yourself even further to defend it. You seem to have abandoned even the pretence of honesty and integrity now.

If you think that I have discredited myself then you are entitled to your opinion.

I was merely questioning the way in which you have presented the information in this post. The quotes I refer to are not - contrary to the way in which you have portrayed them - directly from the video you have included. Anyone can see that for themselves if they watch the video.

If you are unable to use even a modicum of honesty in your debates, would you not serve your cult better if you just said nothing rather than exposing the abandonment of personal integrity needed to defend it?

Please will you tell me the time-point in the video you have included at which William Lane Craig *actually says* (as you put it) "we should actually pity the "traumatized" soldiers who have to break into houses and murder them" and "It's not a pleasant job, but somebody has to do it. It's all to the good in the end!"

I maintain that these quotes are not - contrary to the way in which you have portrayed them - directly from the video you have included.

Perhaps on the occasions (plural) I watched the video I have missed them. Should you prove to me that that's the case, I would of course be sorry for wrongly accusing you of being misleading.

Amusing the you accuse me of lying about what William Lane Craig said by posting a video of him saying it. Is this an example of the type of Christian apologetics practised by devotees of Lane Craig, or just you stuck for anything worthwhile to say again?

Your extreme right-wing fanatical political gibberish has again been removed. Please chose some other venue to help you feel better about yourself by denigrating others, if you can't think of a civilised way to do it.

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